updated 08:50 am EDT, Tue October 19, 2010

WD Caviar Green 3TB drive official

Western Digital landed a symbolic milestone today by becoming the first to ship a hinted at 3TB internal hard drive. The Caviar Green 3TB packs 750GB per disk platter and is tailored to 64-bit platforms like Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Windows 7 64-bit that can see and boot from drives larger than 2.19TB. The drive builder goes so far as to bundle a special Advanced Host Controller Interface adapter so that 32-bit Vista and Windows 7 installs can still get to the full contents.

As a Green edition, it spins at a slower 5,400RPM and is intended for those who value the power savings or who have tight enclosures where lower heat is vital. It still has the same 64MB of cache as Western Digital's best drives and plugs into any SATA or SATA II interface.

Drives should be available today, with the flagship 3TB drive costing $239. A more frugal 2.5TB version is also available and costs $189. The company hasn't said when it expects mainstream Caviar Blue or performance-oriented Caviar Black models to arrive.